I used Gengo to once translate a letter… I used Gengo to once translate a letter from Eng->Japanese that I wanted to send to my girlfriend's company about their poor COVID work-from-office rules. I received the translation in less than 24 hours and upon showing it to a JP friend they said it was mostly perfect. There are lots of negative reviews on this site, but this is my own experience

Apparently, they hire unprofessional reviewers I'm a professional freelance translator, and taken their test just to see. They rejected my translation, and they just said that "I made too many errors" citing just one example. This example was not exactly an error, which just showed how illiterate and ignorant the "native" reviewer is about his (my) language. If they think they are hiring qualified translators this way, you can just guess the level of translation you will get. Don't waste money on them. If you think I'm just taking out on them for rejecting me, fine, please go on and waste your money and time.

Paying for google translate... We are an online furniture retailer and have spent over $10k on translations for our European expansion to find out upon going live that almost all of the translations done are just copy and pasted from google translate. It’s an absolute disgrace and utterly fraudulent as a service. We are now in the process of escalating this issue now that we have found out about it. In the event we get resolution I shall come back and edit this review.

Bad for everyone Imagine that you're translating subtitles to a video, and the person speaking is stuttering, starting and ending a sentence, changing tense, etc. You translate it in line with the tone of the original translation, as well you should. Then the Gengo review comes in and marks your translation as "awkward". "Well, of course, it's awkward, because the original is awkward," you say. The Gengo support team dismisses you with a repetitive statement of, "As a translator, it's your job to make it not awkward." So, when the original is, "I...I mean...I don't know, I wasn't...I couldn't have...I'm not sure I..." according to Gengo, your translation should be: "I don't know." Anything else will be marked as "awkward". This is a terrible experience for a translator AND a bad result for the customer.

I Love Gengo We need quick translations for my clients and Gengo really fits the bill. They're able to give quick turnaround for many languages at a reasonable cost. I highly recommend them.